If you haven’t already experienced abbreviation overload, Apple
has added two more to your plate: HEVC (High Efficiency Video
Coding) and HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format — yes, it’s
short one F). These two new formats will be used by iOS 11 and
macOS 10.13 High Sierra when Apple releases them later this year.

While you may never have heard of HEVC or HEIF before, both are
attempts to solve a set of problems related to video and still
images. As people take photos and shoot video at increasingly
higher resolutions and better quality, storage and bandwidth start
to become limitations. Even in this day of ever-cheaper and
ever-faster everything, consuming less storage space and requiring
less bandwidth when syncing or streaming still has many positive
aspects.